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Category: Doorways

Hey all! I thought I made things easy, for my title reveal, but no one wants to pick certain letters. So in the interest of revealing my title sometime this week, I’ll give some clues to the remaining words…

My clue:

Headwear for kings,

Horse heads in chess

and a disappearance after the fact.

Now much easier to guess.

Hope that helps. If you haven’t guessed a letter yet, go do. I’m offering a $50 Amazon voucher as prize for one lucky guess (even if you were wrong).

Speaking of help, helping to make people’s day is a bit hard this month, since no one seems to want to nominate people for the paying forward awards. As such, I’ll be extending the deadline. Please please please go here to nominate someone.

Hey all! I’m so seriously excited. Not only did I hit 1000 GFC follows, but I got the go ahead to make an announcement I’ve been dying to share.

Sadly, no official release date yet and no cover. Instead, I can announce that Doorways will be published under a better, more epic sounding name.

But as a show of my gratitude and because I’m just a tad evil, I decided I’m going to make you guys work for the title. I’m going to give you spaces, and you need to guess the letters. I’ll fill in the correct letters one at a time. So if there’s a repeat letter, I’m not slotting it in again before someone guesses the letter a second time. Only one guess per person and one letter per guess, please!

Once all the letters are filled in, I’ll enter all the people who guessed (whether they guessed right or wrong) into a draw and the winner will get a $50 Amazon voucher.

Please please please spread the word! The more the merrier, right?

Okay. Here are the spaces: The War of Six Crowns: The Vanished Knight

Get guessing!But before I go, I just want to say thank you. Your advice and support have meant so much to me. It has been an honor to get to know you.

1) I’ve still only received a handful of paying forward prizes and I want to open the nominations next week. Please please please don’t forget to volunteer!

2) Because my life is steadily becoming busier, I won’t be doing the Word Master Challenge this month. Much as I love it, I just can’t do everything at the same time.

3) Entries for my Crazy Goals Bloghop are still welcome. Any crazy/important goals are welcome.

And now, on with today’s blog.

Marketing

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Doorways (announcement about that coming soon) might be published sooner than I thought. It depends on a variety of factors, like when I’ll have my tax stuff officially sorted out and how fast I’ll be doing the final edits, but the release might be before the end of this year. Maybe. *crosses fingers*

Even though it might be later, though, I’m assuming it’ll be sooner, which means I need to put together a marketing plan A.S.A.P.

Obviously, there will be bloghops and reviews, but I’m thinking a bit further ahead.

This book is part one of a series. It’ll be kicking off, a series. As such, I’m going to brand and market the series. Yes, the book will be what draw people in, but I’m not doing multiple images for multiple titles. And because I’m the go big or go home type, I’m seeing graphic artists tomorrow to put together a kick-ass campaign.

Sound premature, maybe, but I want everything as ready as possible so that I can simply slot together everything I need to do a few weeks/months ahead of time. Hopefully, I’ll generate enough buzz to get a nice debut release going. I’m hoping some of you will help.

More than that, I also need to figure out the timing of a few announcements. Like: The series title. And Doorways‘s real name. After all, the last thing I want to do is spam my bloggy friends.

Sometimes, it scares me. Every passing day brings me that much closer to publishing my book. To having my work pried from my nervous fingers and thrown open for the world to see.

I’m so terrified that it’ll fail to gain an audience. After so much time spent just to get Doorways to a state worth publishing, it might just break my heart to see it flounder in the market.

Here, I know some of you are rolling your eyes. First books are stepping stones to the next ones. I’ve heard it before.

But the fact is that other books exist in my mind under Doorways. As in Doorways covers most of my creative thought. It’s done so for over half a decade. The world, the history, the characters, everything exists there as if completely real. The other stories… well, they’re real too, but only for a few weeks at a time before the beast that’s the Doorways series drowns out all other voices once more.

So no. To me, it’s my first book, but it’ll never be a stepping stone. Except to launch me and my readers (one or one million of them) into the rest of the story.

And damn it, I still have a lot of this story to get out there. I don’t want it to run out of steam after two books.

That terrifies me even more than just the first book failing. Because without telling the whole story, working so hard on the first quarter of it feels absolutely useless.

Needless to say, the speed of time running by is making me very nervous.

I know this has to be done, though. It’s one of the things I’m made to do. Create stories and have others read them. For that to happen, I have to close my eyes and let my fears go.

Anyone about to be published feel the same way? For you published authors, how did you feel right before publishing?

In case you’re wondering, I’m aware that this doesn’t start with C. 😉 The A to Z Challenge post will go live at 1:30 p.m. Central African time.

So. Back to my insecurities.

In case you don’t know, the Insecure Writers’ Support Group is a monthly bloghop where writers get together to share insecurities and encouragement.

This month, I have a serious insecurity.

See… Doorways was accepted for publishing on the condition that I split it into two novels. Great opportunity because I basically have two books in the series done.

Not so great in that it means that I had to take an ax to the story I love.

BUT! There was a point in the book, almost exactly halfway into the story, that acts sort of like a natural break. So that was easy. The difficult part came in when I actually have to separate Doorways not into two halves, but into two stories.

Because now I have to take a story that worked (and worked well, even if I say so myself) and add to it.